Thanks to everyone who made it out today! Here are a few things we talked about: - An post with an excellent comment string by @Doug Peterman about play-by-post games (PBP games): skool.com/game-masters-laboratory/pbp?p=4b43a12f - A live-game events company in Pittsburgh that connects players and DMs at local spots: dungeonsndrafts.com/areaEvents/default - @Elizabeth Roberts 's new company for connecting local Pittsburgh players, DMs, and games: QuestYinzGames.com - @Jordan Peacock runs 10 paid games a week - for those of you looking to go semi-pro or pro, it might be worth checking out how he does it: linktr.ee/sortilege - A resources for quickly building balanced encounters: freshcutgrass.app - The Sablewood intro adventure for Daggerhear teaches the GM as well as the players as you go: daggerheart.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Sablewood-05-20-25.pdf - People will use DnD 5e to run anything... why?? For example: sw5e.com/

Something that has always been a part struggle as I get older is finding a group. Not just a one shot. But a real campaign group. With my schedule and living on the West Coast. And to be honest I am use to a gaming on every other Saturday. I know that might be old school. But beside when I was in grade school for a sleepover. I never played during a week. For my mind set weekdays is for school and sleep and some TV hehe. When Civid happen Before then I never thought of playing during the weekdays. And boy did I do a lot of gaming during that time. But now we are back to a similar normal life. So my weekdays is too busy or too tired to even think of gaming. So besides solo gaming I have tried. But the thrill of a group it is ok. So I have thought about play by post. But my experience with playing what will is beyond zero. I got some serious questions. How does combat and a social reaction work. I have a hard time seeing how that could work well. I feel like I want it to work but I have a hard time seeing how it works. Help me I want this to work.

Last night was our first session of our open table Blades in the Dark game! Thanks to @James Willetts @Richard Mills and @Beth Bachuss for taking the plunge and pulling off some daring heists! I’ll update this each week with an overview and quick summary of the session, the prep, the post-game accounting, and some insight into the proactive process, to hopefully make the motions of running a proactive game a little more open and approachable. This week, we kicked off by choosing some pregenerated characters (to my great disappointment, no one picked “Jon’ah the Pungent”) and learning a few basics of the system. Then we got right into the action! I haven’t had the chance to make a poll and decide crew type (look out for that tomorrow!) so I chose cult to get us started and the group decided they wanted to steal the shiny ancient obelisk described on their crew sheet. In Blades, every crew type has a bunch of Claims—valuable turf, places, or objects currently held by other factions. Since we’re just starting, I substituted the claims sheet for goals to get the ball rolling quickly. I’ll talk more about my plans to make this a bit more proactive in my post-game section. The heist was good fun! The players decided that the Church of Ecstasy probably had the obelisk, and that it was being brought to their large temple by the Gondoliers. Meanwhile, the Keepers of the Flame infiltrate the church for cultish purposes… Highlights include James’ leech unleashing an unknown horror from a prison to wreak havoc and destruction, Richard’s whisper unleashing an indoor hailstorm to spook off some guards and loot the organ loft, and Beth’s lurk pretending to be a wealthy donor and strongman the delivery men into moving the obelisk for her. We opening and closed with critical successes, so things were mostly in a pretty safe position thanks to great rolls and clever plans! Downtime included pissing off the yet-unnamed rival gang, who have vowed revenge and will return at a later time. Also some training and some inventing of dangerous anti-ghost substances.

I tend to do some of my game prep on Friday mornings, so I'll be hosting an informal coffee hour on Fridays at 11am ET. It's a little late for coffee, sure, but I'm hoping this helps some of our non-US members join us (and it won't be too early for members on the West Coast). Go to the Calendar page to see the event in your own time zone. Come hang out, drink your beverage of choice, and talk about your ongoing and planned games. See you there!

7:00 PM ET Wednesdays! We're running our first sessions of Blades in the Dark on Wednesdays! It's open table---you can make one session and never play again, or try to play a bunch of times. No experience with the system is expected or necessary, and it's pretty easy to just pick up and go. I'll email details to those playing, but we'll run it in a Roll20 VTT, so you'll need a free account with them. You can make a PC in advance, or pick from pregens we'll have. Excited to play with you all! You can sign up below---spots are first come, first serve. 3/25 Game: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/70A0B44AFA723A2FB6-63028606-blades 4/1 Game: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/70A0B44AFA723A2FB6-63029032-blades If you're unable to make that day and time, don't worry! We'll have other days and times we'll do intermittently so more people have a chance to play. I'll also be launching a poll tomorrow to decide what criminal crew type we'll be playing as. See you all there!